A: The answer is rather simple, but it is not well displayed in the
manuals. In order to read a read-only file you have to set the
FileMode as 0 like below. Else you'll get runtime error 005 "File
access denied".
  var f      : text;          (* Can be any file type *)
      savefm : byte;
  begin
    savefm := FileMode;       (* Save the current FileMode status *)
    FileMode := 0;            (* The default is 2 *)
    assign (f, 'readonly.txt');
    reset (f);
    { have your wicked ways }
    close (f);
    FileMode := savefm;       (* Restore the original FileMode *)
  end.